Catching up on Christmas

I wanted to share with my friends a little of the Christmas tree at my parents. Our tree is of the highly eclectic variety. My mother was quoted as saying this year, "There is always room on the tree for 10 or 12 more (ornaments)..."

The felt Lucy...one of the first indications of the crafty greatness yet to come in my future. The whole Peanuts gang is on there, in various stages of coming unglued. I think there will have to be a serious Elmers glue intervention in the near future. I love that Muffy and my childhood art projects still take center stage on the tree.

Below Lucy is Mother Jones in a Santa hat holding a tree. We have three of those on our tree- got to have Mother Jones!

These vintage paper mache ornaments are part of my earliest Christmas memories. They are signed De Sela. I have seen other ornaments by this artist on eBay, but none as cute as the ones we have. When it comes time to divy up the Christmas ornaments there could be war, thank heavens some of them are doubles. This little doodlebug is my favorite!

Maybe I'll let Muffy have this little grasshopper?

Angels and snowmen are multiples, so we each get one!

There is this sweet little worm munching on watermelon and another little worm chomping on a juicy pear.

A real struggle may occur over the little orange angel. My mom thinks she is ugly and has been trying to get rid of her; Muffy and I adore her. The only reason she still makes an appearance each year is because Muffy and I dig her out and plunk her down in the middle of mom's angel collection on the piano. I will try to be generous and share.

It is hard though...my mom and dad bought those ornaments when I was a baby. It is really one of the few times I differentiate between my family and hers. For 14 years these ornaments were my childhood and mine alone. But they have been on the tree for her whole life too, so...she can have a snowman and a little angel and we'll see where we go from there.

Here's mom, aka Jeannie, showing off her Pomatumus socks knit from the lovely sock yarn from Yarn Pirate. Fortunately the fit is perfect, cause I'd hate to knit them again!

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas...that all your knitted gifts were met with delight...that Santa brought lots of knitting paraphenalia...and stockings were stuffed with cashmere not coal!

Cheers to us all having a happy, healthy new year!!!

Herringbone Happenings

...and happiness...my December has been all about herringbone. Embarrassingly, it took me a bit to realise that my two big Christmas knitting projects were the same stitch, oy. (Are you allowed to have Christmas and oy in the same sentence?)

I am knitting the My So Called Scarf for my uberfabulous handyman, Bill. The yarn is Lorna's Laces Bullfrogs and Butterflies in the Tuscany colorway. It is doing a pretty good faux argyle, which has kept up even though I have two skeins in here. I was so worried that it would stop when the first skein ran out. Love the pops of bright blue that will compliment his baby-blues.

Second up are the Charade socks for my also uberfabulous stepdad, EB. These are knit using Schaefer Anne in Mr. Greenjeans (love the name almost as much as the colorway!) This is the first time I am using Anne for socks and the fabric on ones is wonderful. These are going to be some toasty socks.

Last night I called my mother for a quick size check on leg length. Serendipity struck and I was just where I needed to stop for the ribbing. I love those moments...really love them...those socks were taking forever to knit. Hopefully tonight I'll get to switch the status to finished on Ravelry! I'll post finished pics when EB models them on Christmas morning.

Now, on to why I was being such a dip and not realizing for so long that herringbone had taken over my life. The stitch pattern is written differently on the two projects.

My So Called Scarf's line one of the repeat reads: *sl 1, K1, psso but before dropping the slipped stitch from the left needle, knit into the back of it*

And Charade's line one repeat is *sl1 purlwise, K1, YO, psso knit stitch and YO*

In my humble opinion the Charade version is much easier to understand and faster to knit. Since I have switched to that version, my scarf is growing much more quickly. I might even have all of my Christmas knitting off the needles on time. How could that happen?